He began to walk again, slowly at first, but then more quickly until he was nearly running, the Guardians following close behind him.
A thought had occurred to him: she had been warned to stay away from him. The way she had started at his presence, the combination of fear and surprise on her face, it all said she hadn’t expected to see him here. Here, where he lived and was bound to be.
He shook his head to dispel the thought. He needed to see Mother. Everything would be made clear once he could speak to Her. Perhaps even this was part of the task that would earn him his Inheritance.
The rest of the journey to the Tower was uneventful, though quite long since his rooms were in the lowest of the Fortress’s seven spires. He moved as quickly as he could through the long hallways and corridors, past the grand reception halls on the lower levels and the apartments of the Most High connected to his siblings on the upper. He took a shortcut through the grand training rooms of the Guardians, full of clockwork sparring enemies and training equipment, and finally arrived at the enormous doors that led to the Hall of a Thousand Glories where sat the Diamond Throne.
The doors, originally wood but so heavily gilded it was impossible to tell, were so massive that it took twenty slaves, stationed there day and night, to open them. One of the Most High had once proposed that the doors remain closed except for visits of state, hearings, and proclamations so as to save on slaves. When the Empress disapproved, he claimed it was a jest. So, theEmpress had a jester brought from the city to throw him from the top of a Fortress spire.
So as to save on slaves.
As the Prince approached the doors, a full fist of ten Guardians came forward, dressed in blinding white uniforms and full plate armor, great helms tucked under their arms opposite their greatswords.
“My Prince,” said the captain, carefully looking just below the Prince’s eyes. He was not of the Most High, nor even of the High, but was simply a Guardian and as such existed outside the social order. He would never meet the eyes of one of the Children.
“Open the doors. My Mother has Summoned me.”
“Yes, my Prince,” the captain responded. “She left this for you.”
He held up a steel plate, engraved with gold scrollwork, on which lay a cushion and a roll of parchment. The Prince took the parchment and read quickly. The message was only a single sentence, and a brief one at that.
Await My Presence in the antechamber.
There was no signature, but the message was his Mother’s. No one else would have dreamed of commanding one of the Children.
“Very well,” he said, replacing the scroll. He turned to the left, where a single well-polished mahogany door was set in the stone wall. His two trailing Guardians, their black armor making them look like shadowy wrights next to the blinding white of the Empress’s personal guard, took up positions to either side of the door as he twisted the crystal knob and entered.
The room was dark, lit with only a pair of oil lamps in wall sconces. They were situated on either side of a long table that ran down the center of the room flanked by a number of intricately carved high-backed wooden chairs. There was no one else in the room, and after the door closed behind him, therewas nothing but a heavy silence that covered him like a thick blanket. There should have been someone there—a clockwork servant perhaps, one of Geofred’s many inventions, if not a human slave to offer him refreshment. A simple oversight, no doubt, but one that would not go unpunished.
He walked slowly down the side of the table, tracing a gloved finger along the polished wood. He felt oddly calm.
The door at the opposite end of the anteroom crashed open. Shocked, he dropped his hand once more to his hip, reaching for his missing sword.
But there was no cause for alarm. It was only a handful of slaves, carrying what looked to be a tablecloth. The fools were simply late. He supposed he had left his quarters rather abruptly. He must have beaten the news of his arrival.
“Where were you?” he asked imperiously, his voice coming out much more harshly than he’d intended. Silence followed his question, though, and just that quickly he knew something was wrong after all.
One did not ignore the Children.
The slaves—human ones, the Raven Talisman told him—approached, and they moved with sharp, decisive movements that were completely at odds with the subdued nature of a Fortress slave.
“You will stop where you are!” he commanded.
They ignored him, and instead broke into a run down the sides of the table, unsheathing long daggers from beneath their gray rags.
Automatically, the Prince fell into a defensive stance as the first man came for him, his training taking control of his body. He stepped quickly inside the man’s reach, grabbed his wrists, and broke them with two sharp blows.
The man cried out in pain, and the dagger fell from his numb grip, into the Prince’s hand. He spun it around and stabbed the man in the chest, careful to avoid the heart, seeking only to leave the man incapacitated.His attacker let out a hiss of surprise and pain and fell back into the man behind him, bearing them both to the ground.
Two others men jumped onto the table on the Prince’s right, blades flashing. With two quick motions, the Prince struck the legs out beneath one of them and hamstrung the other with his stolen dagger.
The Prince felt a prick in his neck and a sudden numbing sensation descended along his arm, and then across his shoulders. He looked up and saw one of the ambushers on the far side of the table with adaptsing, a dart gun that was used exclusively in the lands to the south.
Rebels? In the Fortress?
But then the toxin had flowed to his brain, and all thoughts were banished. Darkness swirled in on him, and the last image he had was of the inside of a sack, sewn to look like a tablecloth.
Chapter Three: The Girl and the Giant
